REVIEW: ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Has Stinger That Saves It

Look, time is a flat circle, and now, we’re experiencing the ’90s all over again, or at the very least the Y2K era and everything that goes with it. I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) continues the revival of ’90s horror staples. 

The return to Southport is directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, written by Kaytin Robinson, Sam Lansky, and Leah McKendrick, and features a relatively unknown cast outside of its few returning stars. In the film, the hook-handed killer is back with their fisherman’s slick and all. Only this time, Southport, North Carolina, is a town that has been revitalized by a real estate mogul (Billy Campbell) who saw the property values tank after the 1997 massacre and turned it into an opportunity. 

Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Danica (Madelyn Cline), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and  Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon) inadvertently cause a deadly car accident after celebrating Danica and Teddy’s engagement. High school friends reunite on the 4th of July, but their celebration quickly turns on its head when one of them takes the lead to cover up their involvement in the accident, promising to report it to the police, only to rely on their dad to cover it up rather than face the consequences.

The return to Southport treads familiar, yet shaky ground.

Much like the original film, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) kicks off a year later, when Danica receives a letter with “I know what you did last summer” written at her bridal shower. As their past bubbles up to haunt them, they’re forced to confront the reality that someone knows their secret, and they’re seeking vengeance for it. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) has a higher body count than the original, and that is one of the things it does well. Instead of just letting the audience see each character stalked one by one and then killed, we also see people around them start to fall. While things are personal, there is a seemingly indiscriminate element that makes it harder for the group of friends, but ultimately, the killer comes calling for them all.

As the group begins to look into the past that the town has tried to scrub clean, they reach out to survivors Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and Julie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) to help them navigate the situation and hopefully survive. For their part, these survivors have advice to offer, but much of their role, at least until the third act, is to just keep telling the new group of victims that “trauma changes you.”

Madelyn Cline’s Danica is the beating heart of this slasher revival.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)’s major storytelling misstep is that it doesn’t do much to make us care about the group of friends being stalked by the fish-hook killing psycho, but it also doesn’t make us outright hate them. In the original film, the teens committed murder. They had culpable action and did the work to cover up the crime. Their sin wasn’t just leaving a man to die; their sin was causing it. 

In the revival, the death is manslaughter, not murder. And whether or not semantics matter for the in-universe discussion (they don’t) or guilt (apparently they don’t?), having daddy cover up an honest mistake doesn’t entirely make the friend group in need of a good hack and slash vengeance. 

The motive here is so weak that every red herring made me beg the screen to show some messed-up background or honest evil to reveal itself. But instead, it just doesn’t. In the original film, the friends were driving drunk and partying. Here? They’re watching fireworks, and one of them is just being dumb. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) significantly alters a pivotal moment from the original film.

While this could be seen as an update, it does a lot to undercut and confuse the audience, ultimately weakening the final reveal. There is an argument that ultimately sums up the point of it all. That trauma changes people in such a way that it doesn’t matter if someone is deserving or not. Suppose someone is belittling or not. However, that point is made obtusely, and honestly, it’s a stretch. 

Narratively, the film misses the mark in that way. However, despite her overreliance on the word “diva,” Madelyn Cline as Danica becomes the film’s best character. And well, the most compelling. Additionally, her moments with a returning character (it can be Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., or Jennifer Love Hewitt, I won’t spoil) are one of the film’s highlights. 

Sure, it’s particularly because of the returning star and their excellent delivery of guilt, popular clique, and conscience all in one. Still, this one scene also gives Danica the most depth of any of the characters that we see in I Know What You Did Last Summer. In fact, despite my initial annoyance with Danica’s rich girl vapidness, she winds up being the one I like the most. 

Jennifer Love Hewitt deserved more screen time. 

The biggest issue with I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is that it can’t quite decide whether it’s being a self-referential sequel/revival, ala Scream 5, or if it’s investing in a new group detached from the original. While shots, red herrings, and cameos all reference the conversation with the original, everything outside those moments seems too serious for the film’s flow. 

Where films like Scream 5 used their existing actors as a pivotal foundation in building out the revival story, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) mostly leaves its returning characters to the wayside until the third act. It attempts to forge a middle path between the past and the present, leaving the first two-thirds of the film wavering in its place in the horror canon. 

That said, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) does pull one of the most effective stingers since they just became a normal thing and not a “surprise” for people waiting for the crowd to disperse. While I won’t spoil it here, sticking through the stinger adds a level of self-awareness to the film that it was missing, implying that we’re about to go all in on Jennifer Love Hewitt, and that’s something I will be invested in. 

This revival offers audiences one of the best stingers in a long time.

The stinger works because it elevates the film’s cameos from just that to something a bit more meaningful. What makes revivals a favorite for fans over reboots that have been lackluster is that they embrace their roots and the original films they are building on. There is no erasure of history, but an embrace of what built the horror film into a classic for its era. 

This revival ran the risk of falling into a cameo fest with little connection, but I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) tightly grasps the past in a way that makes it exciting. While most of the film makes it seem like the sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, didn’t happen, the stinger corrects this. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is ultimately a summer movie that embodies the 90s for better (its soundtrack and vibe) and worse (out-of-place fashion choices). And while this is the first time I felt like a hag in a theater with constant Internet speak being thrown around by our core crew, it’s still a mostly fun ride. It may not be the terror of the summer, but it’s at least going to get you going until the next one. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is playing in theaters nationwide on July 18, 2025.